4/2/2010 friday

we packed up the car and left for the airport around 7:30pm. matt dropped me off with the suitcases at the skycap counter and went to park the truck. there were 2 guys in front of me in line so no problem. it's cold and rainy and i'm in shorts but it shouldn't take too long, right? 1 of the guys had overpacked his bag by at least 10 pounds. the skycap was like you have to pay extra and the amount was enough the guy got pissed off. he kept repeating "i have to pay as much as i did for my ticket just for my luggage?" or something like that. i'm sure he was exaggerating a little bit, humans do that, but it must've been significant. i'm not sure who said it or if it's trustworthy, but i heard "10 bucks a pound" at 1 point. to top it off the skycap only took credit cards and there was no card processing equipment at the outside counter so he has to take the cards and run inside, process them, get the tags etc, then run back out. apparently something went wrong as well becuase he had to make 2 or 3 trips inside to get this guy's bags taken care of. meanwhile these 2 guys are just cussing like a sailor. when a family with small children came up to the counter they didn't stop, either. what happened to the manners we were taught as children? finally their bags are on the conveyor and they're off.

now it's my turn. matt's still not back which surprised me. i figured i had waited long enough he should be there by then, but that's ok. i handed the guy our passports and he asked if there were 2 of us flying. i said yes, he was parking the car and i was to get as far with the bags as i could. he laughed. i managed to get the dive bag up on the scale. it was overweight. i did let the guy know i had room if i needed to shift some items from 1 bag to the next i could, but i would rather not. i was preparing myself for the 'just pay it' or take them inside and repack and check them there... but then he looked at the tickets and asked if we were flying 1st class. when i said yes he asked again. not sure if that was for both legs of the trip or for both of us. but when i answered yes again he said "ok no problem". so Hah! fly 1st class and you can get an overweight bag on for free! (ancient chinese secret? as the
commercial used to say?) but then he said there was a problem, he couldnt' check our bags. just then i saw matt walking through the terminal and knew he could deal with it if neccesary. the guy actually let me behind the counter so i could see the display. yup, 'not able to process at this time' or something like that. no problem. the guy thinks it's because we're flying international. at least there's no line inside for 1st class.

we get the bags up to the counter and galina helps us out. the dive bag is overweight so it gets a 'heavy' sticker. then the other suitcase is underweight. but by the same amount as the other is over! so i only had a distribution issue, not really a weight issue. :-) we also got a 'priority' sticker on our bags. i'm guessing that's to distinguish them if for some reason the plane is overweight as a whole and someone's bag has to be left behind it won't be 1 of ours. i've flown 1st class a couple times previous but never with checked bags. galina smiled about the weight thing and said don't worry about it. this was not the last we were to see of galina.

turns out our flight was in the south satellite. we got through security rather quickly. i was ahead of matt and watched our bags go through the scanner. i was curious if we'd have to open the regulator cases and all. as it came through the guy looked at it and then asked me if we were going to SCUBA. "yes we are" i answered. the regulators actually looked like regulators, unlike the bike tires that looked like triangles.  once in the south satellite we found the delta lounge and hung out until it was time to board.

the lounge was nice. they had tvs and you could actually change the channel if you wanted. how is it that jeff probst gets to host larry king live when larry king isn't on? anyway, a little bar in 1 corner, free cokes, juice, water, some cookies and trailmix type stuffs were also set out. there was a little biz section in the back. can't say much for the chairs though. and no loungers or couches. you had to sit up or lay on the floor. just as we're about to get up and leave to board the gal at the front comes over a PA letting us know the pilot found a small machanical issue he wanted to have repaired before we took off and was going to delay boarding for about 30 minutes.

30 mins later they made the call for 1st class boarding. yay for our pilot. and i'm glad that they do those pre-flight checks! so we get on board, take our seats, and we sit. and we sit. the jetway gets pulled away from the plane - wait a minute, it's coming back to the plane. we hear the door open, which once closed seldom happens. the pilot comes on the PA. a passenger in row 11 was putting their items in the overhead compartment with i guess a little too much force and caused the oxegyn masks to deploy in that row. here comes galina, with maintenance crew. they work on it, go on and off the plane a couple times, and the pilot comes back on. he tells us we can't leave until it's fixed, apologizes for the delay, again. matt and i just look at each other, fully expecting to hear the words "we're going to get another aircraft" but instead he says they're going to turn on the in-flight entertainment and pass out the headphones to coach compliments of delta, instead of having to pay $2 each. so that was a nice little consolation. about an hour after our originally scheduled departure time we backed away from the gate.

we had a nice snack and some naps and watched a little tv on the way to atlanta. it was a pretty normal flight until we get to the mississippi border. there was this boom, shake, and drop. yup, we're awake. a couple more booms and shakes and a lot of bumps. we're flying right into the storm. matt turned on the interactive flight map and we saw the pilot had turned us almost directly south from our eastward direction. we could see the lightning sparking it was both cool and scary. we totally diverted a good distance - possibly adding another 30 minutes to our flight time when it was all over. oh well. less layover in atlanta. by then we're awake and there's no going back to sleep. it was about 6 or so in
the morning. i'm sure glad the pilot had whatever it was fixed before we boarded!